Better social protection for the world’s children is urgently needed, says UN report

“Social protection is a universal human right – and a precondition for a world free from poverty.”

This is the opening statement of a new report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF making clear their belief that universal social protection is vital to help the world’s most vulnerable children fulfil their potential. Adequate social protection increases access to the basic necessities of life such as food, healthcare and education.

“It can help prevent child labour and child marriage, and address the drivers of gender inequality and exclusion … by tackling monetary poverty directly, social protection can also mitigate the stigma and exclusion so many children living in poverty experience – and the pain that a childhood feeling ‘less than’ can produce,” the report says.

Between 2016-2020, 50 million children up to the age of 15 missed out on child benefits (paid in cash or tax credits), according to More than a billion reasons: The urgent need to build universal social protection for children. This has increased the total number of children worldwide without social support to 1.46 billion.

The report also reveals that in the same four-year period child and family benefit rates either stagnated or fell in every part of the world. This has consequently left no country on track to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 1.3 Social Protection Systems for All by the end of this decade, it warns.

“The most pronounced decline occurred in the Americas, where coverage fell by 6.4 percentage points from 63.8% to 57.4%,” the report says. “Coverage declined slightly from 84.6% to 82.3% in Europe and Central Asia. And of all regions, effective coverage remains the lowest in Africa, where the rate has barely moved since 2016, from 12.8% to 12.6%. In Asia and the Pacific, coverage has remained more or less the same and is currently 18.0%,” it adds.

Almost two-and-a-half billion children around the world need adequate social protection. “Over 800 million children are living on less than $3.20 a day, 1.3 billion children are living on less than $5.50 a day and over a billion are living in multidimensional poverty,” the report says. This is defined as being deprived of key dimensions of well-being such as health and education.

And the situation continues to worsen. The ongoing impact of COVID-19, the cost of living crisis, and disruption and displacement caused by conflict and the climate crisis are increasing the challenges faced by the world’s children. The report confirms that the pandemic has had a significant impact on children, and that 2020 saw the first growth in child poverty globally for decades.

However, most countries around the world did boost social assistance in response to the pandemic. Although the report’s authors also point out that most of the 4,000 policy measures put in place have been “short-lived”.

What’s more, only 12% of the measures can be described as being fully gender-responsive. This means that women and girls around the world were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.

The ILO and UNICEF are urging policymakers to take decisive steps to reinforce social protection systems, and expand them to protect every child at risk. They outline six steps that will need to be taken to achieve this:

“As families face increasing economic hardship, food insecurity, conflict, and climate-related disasters, universal child benefits can be a lifeline,” says Natalia Winder-Rossi, UNICEF Director of Social Policy and Social Protection. “There is an urgent need to strengthen, expand and invest in child-friendly and shock-responsive social protection systems. This is essential to protect children from living in poverty and increase resilience, particularly among the poorest households.”

Finding ways to promote resilient and equitable economic growth will be the focus of the World Economic Forum’s Growth Summit in May 2023. It will bring together leaders from both the private and public spheres to tackle current challenges through collaboration and collective action.